Andrée De Jongh story led me to other stories of women who joined the Resistance in France. I found literally dozens of memoirs written by women who had become spies and couriers and helped to create the escape network. These women were like action-star heroes.

Megan Chance

Categorized in : Hero Stars Spy

Calling it lunacy makes it easier to explain away the things we don't understand.

Megan Chance

lunacy easier calling

People forget that old women were young once, but d'you think we old women forget? In my heart, I'm still thirty.

Megan Chance

heart people thinking

Sight is one of the most easily deceived senses. I could make a coin disappear and your eyes would believe it gone, even if it were merely up my sleeve.

Megan Chance

eye sight believe

I know I'm not normal in this, but [ Severus ] Snape is absolutely my favorite character in the Harry Potter books. He is completely mortal - good, bad, strong, weak, motivated by hatred, motivated by love. A gorgeous, compelling, complex character who definitely earns a spot at my table.

Megan Chance

strong character book

Logic only tells us what's there; it can't really address what isn't. Even the most devoted empiricist must admit that we have no hope of understanding the universe. Some things are unknowable.

Megan Chance

addresses logic understanding

In the end, there's only one thing you can believe. Bodies are honest; they don't lie.

Megan Chance

body believe lying

The only truth was whatever you could make someone believe.

Megan Chance

believe

I see the emphasis on a lot of ideas and I know that's directed at me. [Megan Chance] come up with an idea, hone it, and write it. I come up with thirty ideas, flesh each one out, research each one, come up with characters, and then decide I don't like it.

Megan Chance

writing character ideas

Impatient men are generous ones. Or haven't you learned that by now?

Megan Chance

generosity patience men

The material world is simply an expression of the mind; that's what so many fail to see. We're so dependent on what is before us that we discount our intuition. Yet if one dismisses instinct, how can one understand or believe in a world that exists beyond one's sight?

Megan Chance

expression sight believe

The answers are what they are. Just because you don't like them doesn't mean they aren't true.

Megan Chance

answers mean

With The Nightingale, I had been kicking the idea around for years. I was frightened to write it because on the surface it seems so different for me.

Megan Chance

writing years ideas

All life's a risk, that's what makes it interesting.

Megan Chance

risk interesting

You learned to run from what you feel, and that's why you have nightmares. To deny is to invite madness. To accept is to control.

Megan Chance

madness feelings running

Trying to justify a world we don't hold all the answers to is what bedevils the best of us. Sometimes it's better just to accept that things are as we see them.

Megan Chance

answers trying world

Coming up with the idea is the worst part of writing for me.

Megan Chance

worst writing ideas

It felt like an oversight to me, something that needed to be corrected. They [women who hid Jewish children] deserved to be understood and remembered.

Megan Chance

oversight needed children

There were others, women with stories that were told in a quieter voice: women who hid Jewish children in their homes, putting themselves directly in harm's way to save others. Too many of them paid a terrible, unimaginable price for their heroism. And like so many women in wartime, they were largely forgotten after the war's end.There were no parades for them, very few medals, and almost no mention in the history books.

Megan Chance

war book children

The woman who led [downed airmen] was named Andrée De Jongh and her story - one of heroism and peril and astounding courage - became the inspiration for my novel.

Megan Chance

heroism inspiration stories

I had read a lot of books on World War II, but I didn't know that downed airmen had hiked over the frozen peaks of the Pyrenees Mountains in shoes that didn't fit, in clothes that weren't warm enough, with German and Spanish patrols searching for them.

Megan Chance

shoes war book